


My Pain Still Matters

by Maybe_or_Maybe_not



Category: Septiplier - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF, jacksepticeye - Fandom, markiplier - Fandom, youtube - Fandom
Genre: Angst and Feels, Anxiety, Bad Thoughts, Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Jack's a good boyfriend, M/M, Mark needs a hug, Mental Health Issues, Sadness, Scars, feelings of hurt and selfishness, nothing too graphic, self-hate, some emotional healing, talk about suicide and suicidal thoughts, talk of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 05:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12183723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maybe_or_Maybe_not/pseuds/Maybe_or_Maybe_not
Summary: Mark is up late at night thinking too much, going over what he thinks is true about himself and all that he's going through. But it's Jack that helps him understand, in the end, what really is true."He laid in bed unmoving but for his heaving chest that wouldn’t stop pushing fresh tears to his eyes. Hardly breathing, now coughing, his head swam further on and there was no stopping this delirium until a noise came from the door across from him. Everything came falling back when he was caught up in the sweeping gesture of a steady embrace. His body shook harder under a quickly descending rain of kisses soaking up his tears, soft hands stroking his hips."





	My Pain Still Matters

**Author's Note:**

> The last story I posted on here made me so deliriously happy that I wanted to write something again, a bit more personal than the last. I know this a place with a really good community so I'm not as scared as before to go into depth on the topic of depression and things that are within the same vein of that. 
> 
> I wouldn't say this is as poetic as my last work, but I tried my best to hopefully make it worth reading for anyone who wants to. So, just a big thank you to anyone who does, I really appreciate it immensely.

_I’m not suicidal,_ Mark conceded for the hundredth time that night, _I’m not._ And he wasn’t, you know, never was.

No. Not _suicidal._ It had never gotten _that far,_ but still…

 _Not suicidal, not suicidal, I don’t want to kill myself, not suicidal_ \--the phrases spun in a flurry in his head anyway, and it wasn’t denial.

Because he wasn’t, and his mind kept replaying this important piece of information for him, along with so many other phrases, like a broken record that he never sought to get rid of.

In fact, it seemed Mark never got rid of anything in his brain. Memories were important, were they not? All memories, even the bad ones, the very, very dark ones that repeated again and again… ever sickly.

Sickly…yes, that was the word. And that’s what they said, _he was sick._ A mental illness, depression to be specific, coupled with anxiety, but it felt mocking. Where were the signs of this illness, this sickness? The only signs he knew were inside the cluttered space in his head that he never cleaned out. That same place he stored all the thoughts he ever had, the very best and very worst ones laminated as to never die.

Highlighted strings of words upon pages and pages of the life story his mind recorded within the folds of his brain. And again, this recording was broken, breaking, in a way Mark didn’t know how to fix.

These words that echoed into headaches that no one could see. Sending him spiraling, falling, trying to pick up his shattered pieces that strained under the fierce punch of each vicious letter. Like they were being produced from a typewriter, he could feel every single one...ever sickly.

And it came again, like it often did-- _not suicidal, not suicidal_ \--so much you’d think it would be the very opposite, but that was not the case.

And since Mark wasn’t--since his depression never reached that far as for him to want to take his own life--he thought it not important.

 _If I don’t want to die, who am I to think it matters? It can’t matter, I’m_ not _suicidal… I’m just depressed. I’m just messed up, that’s all. My problems aren’t as big as theirs._

Theirs… the people who _were_ suicidal. The people who battled with the same disease of the mind he dealt with, just stronger. Just more lethal. Just a hundred times worse, is what he would tell himself. Like a spreading cancer, something you can hardly overcome. And that’s how Mark compared it, his pain wasn’t like theirs, because his wasn’t terminal.

He would more likely survive this, while they more likely would not.

So did that mean his pain didn’t matter?

Mark thought he knew the answer. Because he _didn’t_ harm himself physically, scars _didn’t_ litter his arms… he _didn’t_ stop eating, he _wasn’t_ anorexic, there were _no_ ribs to be readily seen…and above all else, the most important fact... _he didn’t want to die._

So, how could it matter? How could it matter at all?

But…he _did_ hurt himself mentally…this is where they differed. He scarred his mind instead of his arms with every terrible all-consuming thought…and he ate more…ate his worries...he hated the mirrors almost more than himself… he tore himself apart with anxiety, stress, and thoughts of inner-death, death of who he once was…and _oh_ …how he wished he could be anyone else in the world, yet he _still_ wasn’t suicidal.

A sob pulled it’s way out of his throat then, sharply, slowly, as he lay in bed, not sleeping. He thought himself selfish to be crying, _dying,_ on the inside only. Slowly. 

He hated himself more for not wanting to die, because, if he didn’t, he _had_ to be selfish to think his pain was worth the mourning, worth the self-hate. 

It was such an ugly contradiction, he found himself nearly laughing: to hate yourself more when you think yourself selfish to hate yourself to begin with.

He laid in bed unmoving but for his heaving chest that wouldn’t stop pushing fresh tears to his eyes. Hardly breathing, now coughing, his head swam further on and there was no stopping this delirium until a noise came from the door across from him. Everything came falling back when he was caught up in the sweeping gesture of a steady embrace. His body shook harder under a quickly descending rain of kisses soaking up his tears, soft hands stroking his hips.

“Shh, it’s alright now, I got you, it’s okay,” a voice soothed from somewhere outside of himself, from seemingly all around as thin arms wrapped tightly, sweetly, around his torso. “You’re okay, darling, deep breaths now, you’re safe.”

And so Mark’s breathing took a calmer turn gradually, after some moments of waiting for the storm to pass, for himself to settle in the arms he knew so well. There were few who knew how to hold a hurricane so violent in its self-destruction and not get caught up in the current. 

His tears subsided wearily, wading gently, mind swaying, in the same arms that seemed to always save him from drowning in himself. This was peace, this in-between. This pause in the midst of chaos that he would never tire of that could only be found in his boyfriend. In Jack, the smol green bean he loved more than the world. In Sean McLoughlin.

And it was when Jack started humming a faint Irish tune, a soft lullaby, that his hands were able to finally recover from his tremors. Mark listened to the words washing over him, foreign and healing, recognizing a few here and there from previous conversations as his hands began to trace along the pale arms encircling him. The tips of his fingers trailed lazily yet lovingly across the lines of old scars from years ago and Mark felt a rush of selfishness again.

Maybe if he didn’t know first hand how bad depression could get for others he wouldn’t feel that _extra_ swell of self-hate it brought to know his own agony was no match to what _he faced._ To what the love of his life once went through, how close he was to the edge of the end and Mark had never even got _close._

And it was the most bizarrely _silly_ and _horrific_ of ideas that crossed his mind just then… _that he wanted to._ He wanted to know what it was like, to be at the brink of no return. He wanted to feel that way, the way Jack had felt back then. Back in those darkest days he had, bleak and timeless, where Mark was the one holding him. He wanted it in that split second when his hands began to shake again and he had to pull them away from such _beautiful_ arms and to his chest, above his seizing heart with Jack’s hands following, clasping over his in strict comfort Mark didn’t think he deserved.

And he couldn’t feel that way, because he didn’t. _I’m not suicidal,_ Mark thought again. But for a moment he _wanted_ to be.

“Hey, you got this baby, _we_ got this. Just like before, you didn’t let me do this alone, so now I won’t let you,” Jack spoke in quiet tones, like he’s done so for months now. “You’ll make it out, _I promise._ We'll work this out together, you don't have to be afraid forever. I have you and things will work themselves out again with our help. I will never abandon you.”

Mark wished he could speak, say something as wonderful back as what he was hearing. But there was nothing he could do to make his voice work how he wanted, so he only leaned back further into Jack’s chest in response, loving the warmth, picking up the steady heartbeat drumming rhythmically against his shoulder. He evened his own heartbeat back down again until they were in sync.

Jack kissed the top of his head next, resting his head atop Mark’s own. They were situated against the wall of his bed and the room was bleeding their shadows against the wall opposite from the streaming light of a window. Together their silhouettes looked whole, they like were a single entity, strong and never fading. That’s all Mark could ever want them to be.

“I know you can’t talk right now,” Jack began again as some unknown amount of time passed, “and it’s okay, you don’t need to. You don’t need to do anything but breathe with me now and believe me when I say that you are worth it. You are worth everything, no matter how big or how small you think your pain is, I want you to know it still means _everything.”_

He brought one of his hands away from Mark’s heart and up to Mark’s face then, right over his right temple. “Whatever is going on in _there_ right now, I am telling you, it is _just_ as important as my scars. Just as important as _anything_ I have suffered. Battle wounds are inside and out, Mark. Soldiers can’t always determine where they end up but _they are_ all _important.”_

A few seconds went by before something wet began to fall on Mark’s cheeks. It took a moment to realize it was coming from both himself and the face above his. The tears blended together to become so indistinguishable from one another that it seemed they shared the same grief. Jack swiped them away with the pad of his thumb even when it seemed hopeless that they would stop. And all was quiet for a long while, even though they knew it wouldn’t always be.

Later, the hurricane would start up again, Mark knew. Emotions would tumble over themselves, tears would fall harsher, winds wound race faster, and damage wound be inflicted again and again, all later. Right now, however, he relished in this peace, this in-between. This eye of the hurricane that was the love of his life. The man that never judged any measure of his pain, who never compared the size of their hurricanes against each other even though they were in separate categories.

Because all hurricanes leave destruction in their wake, big or small, and as he felt the pull of sleep begin to take him he laminated _that_ important piece of information within him as for it to never die.

 _I’m not suicidal,_ Mark conceded for the hundredth time again that night. _I’m not._

But as he slept, instead of that, it was _‘my pain still matters’_ that played on repeat in the broken record of his mind. _Because it did._

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, well, that's that I suppose. Please leave a comment of anything that you'd like to if you have the time, I'd love to hear anything, of course, so feel free to say anything.
> 
> Thanks for reading if you got this far! :) And have a great day.


End file.
